Deborah and the War of the Tanks

by John Taylor

  George’s tank – the commander of which was just over five feet tall – was ordered to advance through what had once been High Wood, now devastated after months of fighting, but in the event they only managed a few hundred yards before becoming trapped among the ‘broken tree-stumps and deeply-pitted ground’.15 This was well short of the British front line, let alone the German trenches they were supposed to attack. A letter written in 1971 by the grandson of another officer contains a shocking claim about the commander of George’s tank, which had become ‘stuck … at the start’: ‘Everyone believed he had ditched his tank by putting cotton wool in the oil – pieces of string being found in the oil-feed.’ As a parting shot, the writer added: ‘After the war [my grandfather] had to go from Ahmednuggar to Poona where he was introduced to [him] as having commanded a tank battalion – having never commanded a section!’16

  There is no way of establishing the facts about this alleged sabotage, but the human frailties of certain officers were recognized by Second Lieutenant Horace Birks, who joined D Battalion nearly a year later and whose vivid recollections opened this book. ‘There were people who were sort of keen on getting there, and people who were not so keen. And the not so keen had all sorts of mechanical failures and so on. The people who were keen managed to get there. Of course, there were people who were so frightened, like myself, one didn’t know what to do.’17

  It is worth noting that the tank accompanying George’s managed to go only a few hundred yards further before it also became stuck in a British trench, the disorientated crew then opening fire in the belief that they had reached the German lines, killing a number of British soldiers.18 Despite this the tank commander, Lieutenant Frederick Robinson, was awarded the Military Cross for having ‘fought his tank with great gallantry’ and then working for fourteen hours to dig it out under heavy fire.19

  The fact was that all too many tanks became ditched on that first day of battle, and on the days that followed. Two other men who would play a prominent role in the story of Deborah also went into action on 15 September, only to meet similar setbacks. Lieutenant Alfred Enoch was in command of D7, one of ten tanks that set out to attack the strongly-held German positions around the ruined village of Flers. No fewer than half of the group foundered early on, including D7 which became ditched before it had even reached the start-line. As frantic efforts were made to extricate the tank, its engine developed ‘a bad knock’ and eventually had to be recovered by the ASC.20

  The experience was a frustrating one for Lieutenant Enoch, a twenty-five year-old Midlander whose war had so far been confined to defending Tyneside against possible invasion as a member of a reserve infantry battalion. He now took charge of another tank which had been hit by a shell and whose commander was suffering from shell shock. All that remained was to bring it back safely, but at least Alfred Enoch had emerged unscathed, and even gained confidence from his initial experience of combat. He had previously been self-conscious about his humble origins compared to other officers he encountered, but his son Russell described how ‘there was a very heavy bombardment, and one of these young men broke down and started to scream and scream. My father suddenly realized “I’m as good as any of them”, and that gave him some encouragement.’21

  Enoch’s section commander was his friend Captain Graeme Nixon, who was only twenty-one but had already survived several months as an infantry officer in Gallipoli. Four of the six tanks in his section were to attack to the west of Flers, including D12 which he commanded, supporting infantry from New Zealand who had also been blooded at Gallipoli.22 On this front the tanks were relatively effective, particularly D11 Die Hard commanded by Second Lieutenant Herbert Pearsall, and the New Zealanders recorded that two of them ‘did excellent work and were a great help to the infantry and had a very demoralising effect upon the enemy who in several cases ran like sheep before them.’23

  Graeme Nixon was less personally successful, since D12 reached the village but was then hit by a shell which disabled the twin-wheeled steering mechanism at the rear, identified as a source of potential weakness by George Foot’s commander, among others. As the tank withdrew it became ditched, before being hit again and set on fire while the crew were trying to dig it out. Nixon returned minus his tank, and minus one crewman who they lost trace of while escaping over the devastated battlefield.24

  It was left to another tank on the same front – D17 Dinnaken, commanded by Lieutenant Stuart Hastie – to penetrate the village, observed by an airman whose report was seized on by an ecstatic press: ‘A Tank is walking up the High Street of Flers with the British Army cheering behind.’25 The reports did not mention that Dinnaken was later hit by a shell and had to be abandoned, though fortunately without serious injury to the crew. In fact, as the day drew to a close, there were few who could have foretold that tanks would one day become a decisive weapon of war. Although we have focused on their role here, they made a relatively small contribution to the battle and the official verdict was that they had achieved ‘very limited success’ in their first action.26

  Despite their impregnable appearance, their many vulnerabilities had also been exposed. Chief among these was the hazard of ditching or bellying in the broken ground, which left the infantry unsupported and the crewmen in mortal danger as they tried to dig out their machines, or abandoned them and fled on foot. Not far behind came the risk of a direct hit by an artillery shell, whether deliberately aimed or falling by chance, against which their steel walls gave little protection – a danger that was driven home the next day when three surviving tanks pressed forward their attack on the far side of Flers, or what remained of it. All of them were knocked out, with the worst fate reserved for the tank commanded by Second Lieutenant Gordon Court which was ‘absolutely blown to bits’, killing the entire crew of eight.27 Even if they avoided disaster on this scale, the tank crews were still vulnerable to injury from shell splinters or bullets that penetrated cracks or loopholes in the armour, or temporarily blinded them by shattering the glass prisms that gave limited visibility, while one man was even injured by a German soldier who crept up and shot him through a loophole.28 The infantry had also discovered that a tank was at best an unreliable friend, and could turn out to be a veritable enemy since it attracted artillery and small-arms fire from all over the battlefield.

  No-one could tell at this stage whether tanks would turn out to be a daring but unsuccessful experiment, though some who recognized their potential were already beginning the gradual learning process that would lead to improvements in their design and performance, and to more effective tactics for co-operation with infantry and artillery. The Germans, after the initial shock of their first encounter, were also learning, and would soon possess more effective anti-tank weapons, although it would take two decades to demonstrate that they had absorbed the most fundamental lesson of all: that the tank, if used appropriately, had the potential to win wars.

  Meanwhile, for men such as George Foot, Alfred Enoch and Graeme Nixon, their fate was now tied to the tanks for good or ill, and they were numbered among the ‘Old Tankers’ even though none of them was older than twenty-five. During the years to come they would face even greater dangers, and as we shall see, their lives would eventually be bound together through a tank called Deborah.

  CHAPTER 4

  Dracula’s Fate

  Whatever his alleged failings, George Foot’s tank commander recommended two of his crew for gallantry awards following the first day’s attack, one of them being ‘Gunner Foote’. The adjutant of D Company recorded this in his notebook, but it is hard to predict what the official response might have been, since they had never really got into action.1 However, just a fortnight later George committed an act of such undisputed bravery that it was even reported in The Times.

  The occasion for this was an attack on Eaucourt l’Abbaye, where a complex of farm buildings on the site of a medieval monastery had been fortified by the Germans, and now that Flers had fallen, this was the next signifi
cant obstacle to the Allied advance on the Somme. An attack was planned for 1 October 1916, supported by the only two tanks from D Company that were still serviceable. One of them was D16 which bore the slightly surprising name of Dracula, in tribute to Bram Stoker’s novel which had appeared less than twenty years before. Dracula had been relatively successful on the first day, entering Flers before being been driven back by artillery fire. During the return journey its commander, Lieutenant Arthur Arnold, was shot in the knee when he left the tank to save a wounded soldier from being crushed under the tracks, and D16 made it home under the command of one of the gunners, Jacob Glaister.2 Both men later received gallantry medals for this, but Arnold was now in hospital in England – though he would return to play a further part in the story of Deborah.

  With Arnold gone, Dracula was now under the command of a dashing twenty-two year-old officer called William Jefferson Wakley who was definitely, to use Birks’ phrase, ‘keen to get there’. The son of an engineer, Wakley had finished his apprenticeship as a draughtsman and was studying in London when war broke out. Within six weeks he had enlisted in the infantry as a private, and was commissioned a few months later.3 With his engineering background the tanks had an obvious appeal and he was one of the first to volunteer, but he had not yet commanded a tank in action, having previously been responsible for transporting the machines across the Channel and up to the front line.4 Events show that Gunner Jacob Glaister was still with D16 on 1 October, and that the crew now included George Foot, whose first tank had been incapacitated in High Wood.

  The attack on Eaucourt l’Abbaye involved a number of infantry units including 47th (2nd London) Division and the New Zealand Division. It opened with a fiendish twist that was worthy of a horror film: dozens of oil-drums were hurled out of projectors one minute before the infantry went over the top. According to the New Zealand official history, ‘30 projectiles were seen to reach their objective satisfactorily, bursting about 1 second after landing and covering the German trenches with lurid flame and great rings of black smoke’. The troops went in against this hellish backdrop, and despite heavy losses they seized a network of trenches known as the Circus near the abbey itself. ‘The trenches were found packed with corpses, piled in many places one over the other. One or two loathsome groups in the centre of the position lay burned and half eaten away by the oil … Their physique … was strikingly poor, and many of them were mere boys.’5

  The Londoners of 47th Division attacked to their left, supported by the two tanks which moved along a parallel system of German trenches, firing as they went. With their assistance, two of the three battalions were able to gain their objectives, but although they passed through the ruins of Eaucourt l’Abbaye, they did not clear the enemy from the tunnels and cellars beneath. The third attacking battalion had been held up by uncut barbed wire, and was now driven back by machine-gun fire from the ruins, leaving some pockets of men behind. Exploiting this setback, German troops now began to infiltrate back into the area.

  To make matters worse for the attackers, both tanks became ditched in the churned-up ground and were unable to fight their way forward or to withdraw. Wakley and his crew now faced a dilemma, for although the attacking troops were cut off and desperately needed their support, it was also vital to stop their new weapon falling into enemy hands. The drama was described in a newspaper report by an anonymous correspondent, probably Philip Gibbs, the erstwhile confidant of George Foot’s tank commander. The Times said that ‘the part played by the “Tanks” in the operation was picturesque and gave opportunity for the display of great gallantry. One of them, finding herself unable to proceed, continued for a while to operate as a stationary fortress.’6 The Official History described what happened next: ‘When the Germans counter-attacked south-eastward down the trenches, the tanks being immovable and unsupported, were set on fire and the crews withdrawn.’7

  Having abandoned their blazing machines, the crews had to get back across No Man’s Land with the battle still raging around them, and it was not long before the inevitable happened. In the words of a medical report, Second Lieutenant Wakley ‘was struck by some shrapnel casing a handsbreadth above the knee. The casing lodged fracturing the femur obliquely’.8 Anyone who has explored the battlefields of the First World War will have come across jagged shards of metal littering the fields, their edges still sharp after a century in the earth. For all its dispassionate language, the doctor’s report tells us that one such fragment from a shell-case, which would have been redhot from the explosion, had been driven into Wakley’s leg above the knee, smashing the thigh-bone, and was now embedded in his flesh.

  This could easily have been fatal, but Wakley was not going to get off that easily. Two or three of his crewmen, including George Foot, pulled him into a shell crater and stayed with him, but it would have been certain death to try to move him by daylight. When night fell the unwounded men could have slipped back to the British lines, but even if they could have carried their officer, it was doubtful if he would have survived being dragged across the uneven ground. They could simply have abandoned him and saved themselves, rationalizing this on the grounds that he would probably have died anyway, but if this thought occurred to them, they dismissed it. Instead, they must have crept out of their shell crater under cover of darkness, dodging the sweeping machine guns and freezing like statues to avoid being picked out under the sickly light of the flares, to gather water-bottles and (one hopes) ampoules of morphine from the dead infantrymen, and to compete with the rats for the food in their haversacks.

  The next day a rescue mission was mounted involving some of the crewmen who had made it back to the British lines, including Gunner Jacob Glaister, the hero of Dracula’s first action. Another officer noted that ‘several men [lost] their lives trying to rescue [Wakley]’,9 and it was a miracle Glaister was not among them, for his medal citation says he was ‘very severely wounded in trying to rescue a wounded officer’.10 According to a doctor’s report he was shot ‘through the body, bullet entering right side, leaving left side just under ribs’, but incredibly enough, the bullet passed right through his chest without hitting any vital organs. Having himself been rescued, Glaister was taken to a casualty clearing station and then to hospital in Rouen.11

  Meanwhile the situation around the ruins of Eaucourt l’Abbaye remained dangerously confused, and George Foot and the others could only huddle together in the blood-soaked mud of their crater, occasionally loosening the tourniquet which formed a slender lifeline for William Wakley, and praying the Germans did not launch a counter-attack which would result in their capture – or worse. As if this was not enough, the Official History records that ‘Rain set in about 11 A.M. on the 2nd October and continued to fall with little intermission throughout the two following days.’12 Gibbs added a further twist to Wakley’s story: ‘A day later he was wounded again by a bomb, which – amazing as it seems – did not burst, but injured him badly in the ribs, so that he had to endure great suffering out there in the crater.’13 The medical reports make no mention of this further injury, but no-one could argue with the conclusion.

  Wakley and Foot remained in No Man’s Land for three days and nights, until on 4 October the adjutant of D Company noted ‘Wakley brought in’.14 George Foot’s local paper said he ‘eventually [got] his officer back into the British lines’,15 but in reality it seems the Germans simply decided they had exacted a high enough price for Eaucourt l’Abbaye and pulled back to their next defensive position, allowing the attackers to move forward and occupy the devastated area. The Times report, sent from headquarters on 4 October, said ‘it was impossible to get [the officer] away until this morning’s attack had succeeded’.16

  So their dreadful vigil came to an end, and George Foot’s courage was rewarded with a Distinguished Conduct Medal, the highest award for so-called ‘other ranks’ apart from the Victoria Cross (which was reserved for the greatest acts of bravery). The citation stated: ‘For conspicuous gallantry in action. He displ
ayed great courage and determination fighting with his tank. Later, he remained for 30 hours with a wounded officer under very heavy fire.’17

  For Glaister and Wakley, an even bigger battle was now beginning as they struggled to recover from their injuries. Glaister was evacuated to hospital in Dublin where he remained for nine weeks, making a good recovery and bathing in the best wishes of his comrades.18 Among them was his first commander, Lieutenant Arthur Arnold, who wrote from his own hospital bed: ‘Too bad that “Dracula” had to be fired in the end. It seems to be the ultimate end of a good many of the Tanks. I am still in bed & my knee is proving a very tedious job. However I believe it will get all right & I hope we may eventually have another dust-up together with the Bosche [sic].’19

  Glaister, who had been a builder before the war, also received a message of congratulations and a gold watch from Whitehaven Town Council, of which his father was a member. His reply indicates that what we would now regard as public-school values were not restricted to the officer class: ‘It is very difficult to give you any idea as to our experiences, but with regard to Myself I only did my duty and what is expected of every man, viz., to play the game straight. I still have trouble with my wounds, but hope to be strong and well again in a month or two.’20